


The Zombified Corpse of Christmas Present

by yuletide_archivist



Category: The Venture Bros
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-21
Updated: 2008-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-25 06:09:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1635671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Christmas is a tough time for Dr. Girlfriend, especially without the most holiday-minded henchman around anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Zombified Corpse of Christmas Present

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Runcible

 

 

Without 24, Sheila has to do the Christmas shopping herself. She knows it isn't going to end well, either. Last Christmas - or, wait, the year before, because she spent last Christmas wearing a gold brocade skirt-suit with a white fur ruff at Phantom Limb's country house in Vermont while his mother gave the help waspish orders about the linens - so the Christmas _before_ that, she counted roughly seventy items under the tree in the control room, all but three of which had the Monarch's name on them, all of them wrapped in a burgandy embossed-butterfly print. There were bowls of eggnog and punch on the sidebar, a fifty pound turkey liberated from an OSI test lab in the oven, and fairy lights on all the consoles, as well as a sprig of mistletoe over the Monarch's throne. 24 was also the genius behind the scale model of the Venture compound that year, although she also suspected him of being the one that cracked under the pressure of the Monarch's threats and demands for _hints_.

She misses him, standing in line at the Williams Sonoma with a three hundred dollar blender and two dozen handblown glass balls clinking in her basket. He was good at the whole gift thing, at the whole deluging-the-Monarch-with-thoughtfulness-and-attention thing. She's alright with spending the trust fund cash on expensive gifts for their social circle - the blender is for Sovereign, the ornaments will be handed out with the homemade gingerbread goblins to their neighbours in Malice - but when it comes to her husband, she's kind of at a loss. 24 had her back on that one. She just never noticed until now.

She raises a gloved hand to the corner of her eye and clears her throat as the cashier turns to her. "Can I have a gift receipt?" she asks, voice choked.

\--

21 is standing at the counter in the kitchen with red icing all over his face and crumbs on his tunic. A lot of the little gingerbread goblins are missing limbs. The red icing is smeared over the stumps with garish abandon. There's green icing for their warts. Sheila adjust her pillbox hat and sheds her overcoat as she inspects the ranks.

"You did a good job, 21." She says, in her warmest voice. In her good cop voice. The voice she uses with slow children and very good-looking housepets. "These look delicious."

"They are delicious," 21 says, woeful. His big red eyes blink slowly at her, and his mask is damp. "I know... I know a lot of guys who would think these were just, like, the height of Christmas spirit." 

She watches his shoulders shake and his throat work. He's the only henchman still on duty for the holiday season. Everyone else has the week off to see families or catch a cheap flight down to the Bahamas. Even the Moppets have old prison buddies to visit. But she didn't have the heart to send 21 home to spend Christmas with Jack Daniels and the Stark Trek: TOS box set. So here he is in the house with them, while the coccoon floats tethered above, undecorated.

"There, there." Sheila says, and pats him on the shoulder. She also brushes some crumbs off his uniform.

He looks down at the cookies. He looks back up. "Hey... that was your hot cop voice. Are you going to press me to your bosom?"

"No." Sheila says, picking up her shopping bags. "Excuse me."

"Could you?" he calls after her. "I could really use the comfort."

\--

The Monarch is in the closet with the lights on, but he appears as soon as he hears her, arms across the door, like he could fill the frame with his sheer hulking size, and mask his doings. Obviously, she can still see past him to the pile of crumpled wrapping paper and the boxes from Sears.

"Monarch!" she snaps, striding over to peer past him. "I can't believe this. Again?"

"I was... looking for the Christmas videos, sweetness" the Monarch hedges, smile sideways. It's at least kind of true: he waggles their old VHS copy of _Horny Holidays_.

"Well good thing your presents aren't in here." She's lying. She's totally lying through her teeth: she doesn't have anything for him. Her kneejerk fear of being caught settles as she realizes that no way can he know that she hasn't already bought him 73 different gifts plus a Swedish-built balsa wood diorama, like he expects. He probably also expects her to have built an impenetrable bunker on a plot of forested land in Nebraska owned by a numbered company to hold all the loot she's got for him. 24 would've done that. He probably did. She stays on the offensive, and growls, "I hope you're going to re-wrap TimTom's riding triceratops."

"Is that what that thing is? It doesn't even move, you know. It just plays a generic adventure song when you smack it on the head. They couldn't afford the rights to the Rusty Venture theme song? That shit's like, fifteen cents a pop."

She compresses her lips at him and turns to go back out of the room. "I'll be up in the coccoon," she says.

\--

She needs one gift. Just one. She needs one, single, spectacular gift, and then she can distract him with sex acts, after. She's been saving the Lousiana Ladder-jump since that time in Amsterdam. Phantom Limb had claimed he hadn't known that the three tranny hookers he'd picked up weren't women, and then made some drunken, humiliating remark about the misleading tones of _her_ voice even as he refused to pay them, so she'd put on a jacket and brought them all out for drinks and tapas, leaving Hamilton to sulk in the hotel room. And the girls had given her some pointers on penises, conditioner, and costume upkeep while they all got roaring drunk.

Huffing an annoyed breath, she quickens her pace through the lilac corridors of the coccoon. Were those prostitutes really the only men she'd ever met who weren't irritating in the most fundamental way? Or does she just really need to stop renewing her Guild membership? Is she just bringing this down on herself? Year after year of childish, selfish Christmases?

She stops and strips her gloves off her hands, puts a hand to her face. She has a PhD in applied electromagnetics, for chrissakes. Now she owns ten copies of two outfits, a purple throne in a flying coccoon, and two dwarf bodyservants. Also a platinum Amex, but she's never been the shopping type. Even the Williams Sonoma girl gave her throat the twice-over for an Adams apple: it's ten times as bad in the Holt Renfrew. She can't buy a tube of lipstick without someone snickering. 

She leans against the nearest wall and looks up. She's somewhere on the seventeenth sublevel, in a corridor she doesn't really recognize, except that there are numbers on the doors. 19. 21. 23. She turns to her left: 24.

Consciously, she'd been planning on taking the coccoon back to the mall. But that thought is getting less appealing by the second, the throne room is a long way up, and - well, has anyone even cleaned out 24's room? She supposes 21 has. It would make sense.

It wouldn't hurt to check.

She gives the door her authorization code, and inside she finds skin mags under the mattress, a bottle of hand lotion on the bedstand and a framed portrait of the Monarch overlooking everything, regally, from the wall over the bed. There's a little black curtain tucked in behind his frame that she can only guess is to cover his glossy eyes when the magazines come out. 

24 has ten copies of his outfit in his closet, too. Most of them are dirty and piled on the floor. His utility belt is still in the plastic case they issued it in back in '98, but his dart gun is perfectly oiled.

Under the bed, she finds a single, wrapped present. It's in that same burgandy embossed-butterfly wrapping paper. A huge golden bow. It's covered in dust, and when she tries to peak under the taped folds, the paper rips slightly, reprovingly.

The tag says, 

  
_To: The Monarch_

__

From: #24

Two years old, at least. Why was it never put under the tree? Maybe out of spite? Or maybe 24 just had some reservations about it. Maybe it's a shitty present. Or maybe it meant too much.

She tucks the present under her arm, turns off the lights, and goes back down to the house.

\--

On Christmas morning, 21 stumbles into the master bedroom already dizzy and foaming from a sugar high, and shakes them both awake. Sheila covers her arms over her barely-opaque nightie and the Monarch climbs out of bed. He's naked and just as excited, and in a small voice 21 says, "Um, maybe you could put some robes on over that, or something?" 

Sheila stays in bed with an arm over her eyes and listens to the two of them stumble down the shag-carpeted steps together. She only got around to putting up the white plastic tree last night, so no one had a chance to complain about the vast shadowy space sitting empty underneath its lowermost branches.

She turns onto her back and listens to their initial squawks of outrage. 

She legitimately tried with the Monarch, but she'd entirely forgotten about 21. He'd never been on her list to begin with, seeing as all the minions got their loot-percentage bonuses on the second Thursday of December. She's not counting on there being anything for her under there, either. Her husband doesn't have the best track record when it comes to un-selfishness. 

Then she listens to the sudden silence and 21's choked, " _Dude,_." 

She creeps to the landing to peer through the railings as the Monarch paws at the lone package's withering giftwrap, and 21 hovers over him. 

In a shoebox, packed with tissue, a polaroid of the original Monarch, circa 1989, his mask and his Monarchmobile with the cramped back seat - the forgotten one that blew up this summer with the Venture robot and 24 in it - and his original crew of a half dozen butterfly-themed minions. 

As Sheila slips down the steps, 21 names all of the guys in the photo. He's not in there, either is she, but there they are: the Monarch and everyone glowering darkly, except for 24, right there beside him, with a dopey grin on his face.

The Monarch turns to her, mouth sagging open, and waves the picture. "How'd-?"

Sheila shrugs. "He left it for you, I guess."

21 has turned away, his shoulders shaking again. A small sound escapes him.

The Monarch says, "Well, that's considerably less horrifying than the zombified corpse I was imagining creeping around the house. Should we go get brunch?"

And Sheila says, "Let me get dressed."

 


End file.
